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Tuesday, September 8, 2009

The Scribblecalm before the Scribblestorm...blahblahblah

Something like that!

All quiet on the Scribblenauts front, eh? Or at least, we're seeing more of the same. This is probably the 3rd or 4th time I've mentioned the so called "calm before the storm", though the previous periods of no news usually proceeded a big event, such as an embargo lifting. This next big event - namely, the release of the game - will most likely be rather large in comparison.

Anyways, sorry for no articles or really any postings today. Nothing really happened that was worth mentioning. I get the feeling most of the big sites have the game in their hands and are currently reviewing it - thus we're not going to be seeing any new impressions or media until the embargo lifts, which will be this coming Monday. The good news is that (in the East Coast) it is officially Tuesday, marking exactly one week until launch. Getting excited?

Expect some more articles/discussion questions/etc. over the week, as I'm not expecting much news. Perhaps we'll see more spilloff of PAX media...but I figure we would have seen that by now! Anyways...I'm rambling now. School starts up again tomorrow in a big way. In about a week's time I'll be covered in projects and tests. I also work every weekend (which ended up being a really big downfall for me recently - AGH!), which only adds to the stress. Lord knows what Scribblenauts will do to my schedule...

14 comments:

Here are a few noteworthy impressions I got on Twitter, which gave me the idea about a possible article you could post for discussion, Penguin.

dwilday@DisconnectD Scribblenauts seems to be a programmatic parlor trick… and at first blush I love it for just that reason.

PalletTribune@DisconnectD I want it badly. And I think it will spawn a new genre of games that are more like toys with structure to advance.

These people's thoughts echo mine, and seeing as how revolutionary the concept of the game is, many people (with good reason) feel like this is just the first stepping stone to a sort of reinvention in gaming. What do you think?

It may seem like a first step towards a reinvention in gaming, but we're heard that sort of thing before and it never seems to turn out quite as amazing as everyone expects.Spore, Red Faction, Black & White. Those are all games that generated huge amounts of hype about their technical and gameplay innovations, but we haven't really seen much follow up or widespread adoption of their unique features.

I think Scribblenauts will be quite fun, and very novel, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it to change the landscape of gaming forever. The core concept has a fairly limited scope for use in other games.

While I agree with you about the gaming industry being stubborn when it comes to ''mixing it up,'' I have to disagree with you about the hype involved with Spore, Black & White, and Red Faction, as the sort of innovation in those games was wildly different in comparison. There has never been a game quite like Scribblenauts, in that you can literally conjure up almost anything that you can think of and use it however you want, so hopefully developers will take note and raise that bar even higher. Like Jeremiah says; This is a true emergent sand box and a definite fresh step in the right direction IMHO. I will agree with you about its limited scope in regards to other games, but the games that doesn't mean that Objectnaut or the concept of the hierarchical item property structure couldn't be applied to other genres.

Off the top of my head, I think that it could work really well in a game with psionic power, or basically any game involving sorcery or even alchemy really. Another cool concept I had; The game would be about virtual reality, where the character is in a synthetic world in which anything that he required would be generated, much like the Matrix programs.

Looking back at Spore, B&W and Red Faction it is true that they each had very different types of innovation, but in the months leading up to the release of each of those games there was a huge amount of hype and a lot of the same sort of talk as what we're hearing here about Scribblenauts too.

Before Red Faction there had never been a 3D game in which you could arbitrarily modify the geometry in real-time, and everyone thought it was going to be the next big thing and all the new games would be doing it, but now, something like 10 years later, Geomod has only been used in 2 more games. Red Faction 2 and Red Faction Guerilla.

Black & White was going to blow us all away with its amazing creature AIs that could learn to perform any action that the player could perform.It was definitely going change the landscape of gaming forever, but in the end it turned out to be little more than a 3D Tamagotchi.

Spore was going to give the players unlimited creative freedom to design and create every creature, building and vehicle in the game.The only limit was to be your imagination.And yet we ended up with millions of phallus monsters and the creation system although flexible still turned out to be pretty limited when compared to what people had hyped themselves up to expect.What shape they were and how the creatures looked didn't really have much of an impact on the gameplay. It was more about adding the right parts to get the right stats to do well.Sure you could create anything you want, but there wasn't really much incentive to do so, and it didn't really make much of a difference anyway.

With Scribblenauts I can see that a similar sort of over-hyping is going on.Sure you'll be able to summon any item you can think of, but their functions and interactions will be pretty basic, and many of the items will behave in essentially the same way.

In the same way as Red Faction it's a cool piece of technology and I'm excited that someone has thought of it and developed it, but I don't think it will be used much in anything other than a Scribblenauts sequel or two.

In the same way as Black & White it sounds really exciting and interesting, but I suspect that it will turn out to be less deep and powerful than people are expecting.

In the same way as Spore it gives the player almost limitless creative freedom, but when you actually get down to the mechanics of the gameplay it won't really make much difference.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it will be a bad game at all.In fact, I'm still eagerly anticipating it, but I'm sure the hype surrounding it has raised a lot of peoples' expectations way above what will be delivered.

Hey Josh, theres a new interview about 5th Cell and their previous acheivments and future goals.Its worth a read. Heres the link: http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2009/09/qa_scribblenauts_emerges_as_breakthrough_game_for_5th_cell.html?surround=lfn